This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Magna • In the event of an earthquake, tornado — or even some sort of man-made disaster — Utah Task Force 1 is expected to mobilize in less than six hours.
Firefighters, medical doctors and civilians make up the 35-person team of highly trained volunteers, who on Friday were learning new ways to rescue people trapped in piles of rubble.
Every 18 months, firefighters from Unified, Salt Lake and Park City fire agencies learn the latest on rescuing victims from collapsed structures.
"We [deploy] when things get really, really bad," said Utah Task Force 1 program manager Bill Brass. "When it gets to a certain point that the locals are so overwhelmed ... they will call in the federal resources, and that is when our team gets activated."
Crews acquire more technical and advanced training in rescuing victims from collapsed structures than they would receive from their local agencies.
Leftover concrete blocks from freeway construction projects, metal pipes, mattresses and damaged recliners are all "incredibly valuable" training materials to Brass and his team.
"To a lot of people this is a rubble pile ... this is just junk," he said.
To Utah Task Force 1, it is priceless — mostly because all the material used in training is donated to the nonprofit state organization.
The force is composed of six teams of five or six volunteers. Each team has a rescue squad officer who is taught leadership skills, while the rest of the team members are taught four major disciplines: lifting and moving, cutting and burning, breaching and breaking, and shoring.
"Those are specialized components that make up a rescue specialist," Brass said.
Task force safety officer and Unified firefighter Wade Russell said even though the 80-hour training takes place over Father's Day weekend, participants were willing to make the commitment to attend.
"Everybody out here has a family or kids, or fathers of their own, but they understand that the work they are doing out here could protect someone else's life in the future," Russell said.
Since being created in 1991, Utah's only task force assisted at ground zero, New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and at other large nationwide disasters. Even though the force's priority is state disasters, it hasn't had to respond to any major incidents locally.
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